Posted on 12/08/2010 9:43:48 PM PST by ChicagoConservative27
WASHINGTON -- Despite weak demand in the U.S. and Europe, oil prices climbed this week to near $90 a barrel, and gasoline prices have passed $3 a gallon on the West Coast and parts of the Northeast.
Why? If demand is down and supplies are plentiful - and they are - why would prices be going up?
Because Wall Street speculators are driving up oil and gasoline prices again - just in time to dampen holiday cheer.
"It's all about investor optimism, and that's been the story about 2010. ... That's the primary reason why we're seeing oil prices at $90 (a barrel) and gasoline making an uncharacteristic climb in December towards $3 a gallon," said Troy Green, a national spokesman for the AAA Motor Club, which monitors gasoline prices.
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
It’s been $3.00 a gallon here in California for over a year.
Because Wall Street speculators are driving up oil and gasoline prices again - just in time to dampen holiday cheer.
Which Wall Street speculators?
Perchance, would any of them go by the name of Soros?
That’s California. Normally we talk about the prices and things in the Rational States of America.
If Bush was still President, the rising gas prices would be right up in the the headlines with the rising number of Troop deaths in Afghanistan. Oh wait...
Lol!
Regular went from 2.99 about 2 weeks ago to 3.13
this evening. Two cents higher than yesterday.
Rising about 2 cents per day.
“Obama’s departing chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, shrugged off rising oil prices Wednesday.
“Oil goes up, oil goes down,” he said.”
Could there be anymore of an arrogant statement about energy prices? The terrible fiscal and energy policies of the rats are pushing up energy prices. The rats want these artificial increases. Voters will not be nonchalant about these energy price increases.
It's not the News Reports, it's who Reports the News.
Future supplies won't be as plentiful, as they would have been without Obama’s drilling bans. A very small shortfall of oil supply produces a disproportionately large increase in price. (IOW, oil is highly price inelastic in the short to medium term.)
You want lower oil prices? Start drilling for it.
BTW, if the environuts in the U.S. and Europe (and Canada too) have their way; the Alberta oil sands will be shut down. If that happens, you'll be thinking back, wistfully, to the good old days, when gas was only $4.00/gallon.
I paid $3.29 for diesel today. That means everyone will be paying more for groceries. Get your Christmas goose before diesel goes up to $3.49.
It is going up because QE2 is destroying the value of the US dollar, which is why “speculators” are trying to find something other than the dollar (such as oil) as a unit of value. It is not a supply and demand problem which was the problem a few years ago.
The Fed is deliberately trying to cause inflation, which sends commodities such an food and energy up.
QE2 is being used to fund deficit spending by government. It destroys the dollar and is a back handed tax through inflation. You pay the tax by more expensive food and gas.
It is also why interest rates will go up, as they are at the moment.
Your post states the cause and effect of rising oil correctly. It’s also having a similar effect on the stock market.
The “look over here” misdirection aimed at the eeeevil speculators is just a diversion. However, the dirty little secret is that bond rates are going UP, the opposite effect of what Bernanke says he intends.
There will come a day, fairly soon, when rising rates and the moonshot in commodities will have a nightmare effect on things. No, Bernanke isn’t printing money and didn’t print money and Clinton didn’t have sex with that woman. True statement; he’s clicking on his mouse and emitting unbacked credit however, the effect being precisely the same thing.
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Liberals are idiots. That Damn Bush is raising gas again.
Futures create the cash market price. Future traders (speculators) go long and short with the same attitude. Unlike the stock market. The futures/forex markets are not biased toward being long, holding, or out like the stock market.
These Speculators look at "direction" where they see momentum moving and jump on board. The more they see a strong momentum move in one direction, the more they jump on in that direction. They will be in, use profits to pyramid positions and take profits -- and/or -- reverse and go the other way.
They don't invest.
Roughly 40% of the current USA budget is borrowed money + interest. The USA is like someone living on a credit card spending 40% more than they make. QE2 is the equivalent of writing yourself a check on your checking account and claiming you have more money in the same checking account and then spending it.
The problem is your checks become worthless junk.
In this case the solution is cutting spending. The trouble is you will have to cut entitlements, such as social security, medicare, welfare, unemployment etc.to achieve the necessary cuts. Discretionary spending is not going to cover enough. Obama and his people are making it worse.
The GOP needs to be concerned with more than tax cuts. Tax cuts might help only in the sense of encouraging productive development: jobs and increased tax revenues. The increase the problem by shrinking the 60% of what is actually paid for in taxes.
The trouble is you could have riots in the streets, if entitlements are cut.
But thanks to the Fed's injection of trillions of dollars into the economy without any corresponding increase in economic growth... speculators have limited options for investment.
If they put it into a start-up, government over-regulation and a slow economy will see their investment be eaten up by the inflation caused by the Fed's huge boatloads of cash being injected into the economy. So that's right out.
Stocks? Same thing... inflation will destroy their investments.
Bonds? Even worse.
All that's really left in commodities. Gold, silver, copper, coal, steel, platinum, OIL, etc, etc, etc. For they are a tangible good, so if inflation runs havoc, the price for these goods go up... keeping the speculators investments safe from that scourge, inflation.
The best way to tame speculation is to have a sound fiscal policy that aggressively combats inflation, not stimulates it.
Remember fiat money printing and oil dollar peg
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